Bait(75)
She fights back tears. Nods.
“I didn’t want to…”
“You didn’t want me to see,” she finishes for me.
“I don’t talk about it. It’s not much of a conversation starter.” I feel so fucking grim inside as I try to explain. “The scars aren’t just out here.” I gesture to my back. “They’re inside, too. Guilt. Hate.”
“What you went through…” she says. “I can’t even imagine…”
“You don’t want to imagine.”
“Your brother,” she asks. “Was he okay?”
“Physically.”
She nods.
“We don’t speak anymore. He hates me. Blames me for all of it. Blames me for her being there. Blames me for saving him first.”
“How can he blame you for what happened?” she says. “It was an just accident. A horrible accident.”
“That’s just the thing,” I say, and her eyes open wide. “I’m not so sure it was.”
Thirty-Two
My longing for truth was a single prayer.
Edith Stein
Abigail
The broken parts of my heart bleed, and it’s all for him.
For the love he lost.
The scars he bears.
The sadness in his eyes as he relives this all for me.
“It wasn’t an accident?” I ask, hating myself for even pushing.
“I don’t know,” he says. “They’re still to deliver the absolute verdict. There are signs it was electrical. It may have been an unfortunate combination of a faulty chemical canister and a spark from one of the generators. It burnt so hot it’s hard to call. So many factors to wade through, and a lot of the evidence was incinerated. They had to identify Mariana from her teeth. Officially, I mean.”
I hate the way I flinch as he tells me.
“Sorry,” he says.
I shake my head. “Don’t be. It’s amazing you’re still alive.” I inch a little closer. “If it was electrical, surely that’s an accident?”
He smiles a terrible smile. “The fire happened at midnight. Two people in that building, Jake and Mariana.”
“That’s pretty late to be working,” I comment.
“We’d had an argument,” he says and my stomach tightens. “She spat at me, told me she was going. I’d have chased her… but…” He stops speaking. “I always chased her. We had a… dynamic…”
I nod. I know exactly what he’s referring to.
“Anyway. I didn’t chase her that night. I couldn’t.” He looks right at me, and there’s more. I know there is. Whatever it is drifts away before he voices it. “I didn’t chase her. I swore to myself I’d had enough of it.”
“And she ended up at the warehouse? With Jake? Isn’t that strange?”
“That bit doesn’t surprise me. Not really. But the rest of it doesn’t add up, not if it was an accident. You see, the chemical vats were stored down the other end of the warehouse. We’re careful with fire regulations, always have been. When the place went up, they were at the top end by the loading bay. You could say maybe someone moved them earlier ready to load, but that doesn’t make sense. It wasn’t on the logs.”
“Mariana moved them herself?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Her or Jake. Or both of them.”
“But why?”
“I have no idea,” he tells me. “Not unless they were planning on burning the place down.”
“You think they were?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” He shrugs again. “Mariana was wild. Unpredictable. She hated the business, said it made me a workaholic, said she was a tiger in a cage, desperate to run free.” He looks away, takes a breath. “I think sometimes that maybe she was trying to punish me, burn down what she thought I held dear.”
“Seems drastic…” I offer.
“And unfortunate. A boiling pot of unfortunate coincidences. The chemicals being piled up in that one ridiculous location, for starters. Then there was the fact that another of our clients was a supplier of animal bedding. Tightly packed sawdust on high racking created a dust explosion of epic proportions.” He sighs. “They know everything but how it started. According to our official documentation, the fire risk procedures were followed to the letter. Mariana wasn’t even an official employee when that fire happened. They’ve struggled to assign any liability, but by the same token they can’t seem to definitively rule out arson.” He sighs again. “Then again, nobody seems to be willing to write this off as a freak accident, either. In truth, nobody knows.”